…this approach has been successful in other places, but it’s not practical here. There are many overheight trucks that have to be able to drive right up to the bridge and turn onto Peabody St. in order to deliver supplies to several restaurants. Making Peabody St inaccessible from Gregson St would make the restaurant owners and the delivery drivers very unhappy.
If you saw a rental truck in your rear view mirror, it would probably seem like a good idea to get out of there quickly, before the bridge gets blocked.
There are multiple elaborate warning systems in the approach to that bridge. None of it works because these accidents are almost all rental trucks. Yahoos who have never driven anything bigger than an SUV and don’t understand the responsibilities that come with it.
seeing the bicyclist pull up on the cross street just afterwards… god that must be a dangerous intersection even when roofs aren’t flying off the tops of trucks
though on the bright side, it’d take a really tall bike to have to worry about the bridge
Go back and look at the video, that red light the truck ran was activated by a laser height sensor. Read the sign between the lights, it comes on when a vehicle is over height.
From the 11 foot 8 website.
The signage is good, and the vast majority of truck drivers notice the problem and avoid the bridge. Large signs alert driver to the low clearance several blocks before the bridge. Half a block before the trestle, a sensor detects overheight vehicles and triggers an LED blackout warning sign that was installed in May 2016. That same sensor also triggers a red-light phase at the traffic light directly in front of the trestle (installed in March 2016), so the driver has 50 seconds to read the warning sign next to the red traffic light and consider their next move.
It’s a sad fact for the internet that the crashes are a lot less dramatic since they raised it 8 inches.
I’ve joked in the past that it probably legitimately impacted that guy’s income. He’s built a substantial successful career just by happening to have an apartment that overlooks that bridge. I’m sure he hasn’t worked in years, with the views he’s getting. They’ve dropped off noticeably though with the crashes being so much less frequent and less exciting.
I did witness a local version involving a railway bridge on the mainline from London to Bristol not far from where I live. It’s very rare for anything to get stuck there, as it’s just an urban road, but this rental driver clearly ignored the height restriction signs on the other side. (It’s a one-way road from the junction the other side of the bridge).
That’s easy- Penske trucks are rentals, and it’s mostly rookie drivers who don’t know to pay attention to clearance signage that hit this bridge. People rent these big trucks and then think you can drive them like cars. Same reason to avoid rental RVs on the road.